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Coming Soon To A Wine Near You: Ancient Amphorae

Terra cotta amphorae, hand-crafted into shapes and styles known since antiquity, are the latest innovation in experimental winemaking. And they’re coming soon to a wine near you.

Andrew Beckham is the unlikely yet ideally-suited leader of the movement in the US. He is a high school ceramics teacher who first bought land in Oregon’s Chehalem Mountains AVA for its timber and suitability as an art studio.

“This has been a really magical journey for us,” Beckham said from the tasting room at Beckham Estate Vineyard in Sherwood. “Everything has happened by circumstance. I hated high school; never in a million years would I have thought I’d be a teacher. We bought the property to build a pottery studio; never in a million years would I have thought we’d plant vines. It’s all been incredibly fortuitous.”

Beckham was inspired by a small number of craftspeople around the world who make wine using the terra cotta medium, such as Elisabetta Foradori at her biodynamic winery near Trentino, Italy and the long tradition of winemaking in beeswax-lined amphorae in the Republic of Georgia. An established fine artist of ceramics in his own right, Beckham expanded his repertoire to include 75-gallon amphorae, which he makes in six-inch lifts using a technique called coil and throw. Each amphora takes two weeks to construct and three months to dry.

But how do wines fermented in terra cotta amphorae taste any different than wines fermented in stainless steel or oak barrels? And is the labor-intensive process worth the effort? The wines seem to

come together much sooner in the process than they do in steel or oak. There is also noticeably more earthiness and minerality. Which makes sense, given the nature of the material: the wine is actually being put into an earthen vessel for fermentation.

The original intent for the amphorae was to sell them at retail, and Beckham had lined up about 40 tentative orders from wineries in Oregon, Washington, and California, several of whom wanted multiple containers priced at $2500 to $3000 each. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized he really wanted to own the project right now. “They’re my containers, I’m making them,” he said. “I want to be the one using them. I want to make sure someone doesn’t make a really terrible wine with my name on the vessel. For the immediate term, we want to explore what the amphorae have to offer.”

The problem was that there was no business plan, Beckham admitted, and “no real endgame. I was just passionate about it. It’s my wife Annedria who’s been the driving force. She’s the one who appropriates funds and keeps reality lingering.”

The Beckhams’ business is growing as a result of experimentation and quick adjustments. Chad Stock of Minimum Wines, a nearby colleague, is experimenting with different varietals using Beckham’s amphorae that have been fired at different temperatures. Companion fermentations are also underway, where the same wine is made in concrete and terra cotta containers in order to compare the differences. Beckham plans to bury some amphora in the ground, following a strategy practiced in Italy: the idea is to keep the ground wet so that the wine doesn’t follow its tendency to weep through the vessel. It’s an ongoing process of trial and error.

That sense of experimentation characterizes the Beckhams’ winemaking journey as well. When they started, they thought they’d just sell the fruit they grew on their property. It seemed like a good prospect, Beckham said, but then they saw that they were essentially working for free: “We put in hundreds of hours and it was a wash at the end of the year.” In 2007 they delivered their fruit to Don and Wendy Lange at the Lange Estate Winery, and got “bit by the bug” of winemaking when Beckham worked with winemaker Jesse Lange.

“We were naïve about that too,” Beckham said. “We didn’t have a good grasp for what the true expense was. That’s when Annedria took the reins and came to be the Executive Director at the Chehalem AVA, in order to learn the business.”

They’ve doubled production each year since they started, all on a shoestring budget. Beckham is taking a hiatus from actively showcasing his art work in galleries, and instead is channeling his energy toward growing grapes, making wine, creating amphorae, and his additional work as a full-time high school ceramics teacher, one of the few in the state of Oregon.

His is a state of perpetual curiosity that’s led the Beckhams from one phase in the entrepreneurial process to the next. With each step they’re learning something new. The goal is to tip the revenue scale so that their family can be sustained on the winemaking and amphorae endeavor.

“If we’re patient and we persevere,” Beckham said, “eventually we’ll be able to have this be our full-time gig.”

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